Most hypodermic needles and other procedural needles are provided with needle shields or covers to project the needle from damage during pre-use shipping and handling and to protect health care workers from accidental needle sticks involving clean, unused needles. The needle shield or cover is usually removed immediately prior to its intended use.
After use, the sharp distal tip of the needle is exposed and can be involved in accidental needle sticks which can result in injury to the user and/or the transfer of disease or infection.
Reshielding of the needle with its original shield is discouraged because of the possibility of the user sticking his hand while attempting to reshield. Sticks can result from missing the opening in the shield or having a needle penetrate the side of the shield and stick the user. Even if the needle shield has a broad entry to guide the needle, potential for piercing the entry and the resulting needle stick is present. To avoid these problems, a wide variety of safety devices has been developed. Many of these involve separate hinged or telescoping shields on the medical device or, in some cases, retracting needles which are activated after use. To avoid infection or disease from the used sharps, all devices, even those with additional safety features, should be disposed of as soon as possible after use into an appropriate sharps container.
In many cases, such as in surgical procedures, a variety of needles are used alone or attached to a medical device which does not have additional safety shielding structure. Many surgical procedures are supported by sterile procedure trays containing all of the needles and sharps for the procedure in question. Protecting the sharp distal ends of these needles and sharps has been partially addressed by the prior art which teaches needle receiving structures into which the used needle is inserted. These devices provide structure to shield the distal end of the needle and provide varied amounts of retention force to prevent a needle from inadvertently exiting the device. Such devices are taught in U.S. Pat. No. 5,417,659 to Gaba. The device taught is a single, individual receptacle having internal elements for aggressively holding the contaminated sharps after insertion. U.S. Pat. No. 6,382,417 to Kanner et al. teaches the advantages of having a multiple receptacle needle immobilizing device for use in a procedural tray. The device of Kanner et al. teaches five aligned relatively close, needle receiving portions. This device allows up to five contaminated needle products to be disposed of as a unit in an efficient manner. This device also presents some problems in that long spinal needles are difficult to insert in to the device without holding the shaft of the used and possibly contaminated needles to guide the tip into the receiving aperture of the device.
Although the prior art has provided many solutions for protecting used needles after use, there is still a need for a simple straightforward easy to manufacture needle immobilization device for procedural trays which can easily be used with both short and long needle cannula without requiring the user to touch a contaminated needle to guide into the device.